


journal

by Cards_Slash



Series: Sass Verse [8]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 17:07:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5673877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>on their ten year anniversary, Altair finally remembers to give Malik the journal he's been writing for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	journal

**Author's Note:**

> this is so much fluff that your teeth might rot out of your skull. I'm not even sorry.

> Happy Anniversary,  
>  Ten years ago, today, you showed up in my apartment. Can you remember what kind of idiots we were then? It’s hard to imagine. I’m not fond of romantic ideations (despite what Lucy says) but now and again I think how immense that feeling of being able to touch you for the first time was. I forget everything else and I just remember what you felt like. I remember how bright and hot and encompassing the feeling of joy was when I knew that you loved me back. 
> 
> I forget the shit we put ourselves through. I forget the fights. I forget the uncertainty. I forget all of that. 
> 
> I wouldn’t trade that feeling, that fluttering-first-touch-shy-and-ravenous feeling for the quieter, slow-burning _knowledge_ of what being in love with you every minute since. I wouldn’t trade our rabid fumbling for the matured love that we have now. I think about how fresh and new it was to have you for the first time or to be touched by you in those first weeks and months, that whole first year a diary of desperate fucking—and I think, we don’t bruise each other with our needs anymore. We don’t scratch and bite to prove our love (except when we do) because we’re not scared that it’ll slip through our fingers.
> 
> I thought that there might come a day when I woke up and I was bored to have you in my bed. I thought there would be a night when I didn’t want to come home. You were a constant in my life, an inconstant hurricane of demands and ideas, the clever smirk at the periphery of my vision.
> 
> If you had those fears, the way I did, you faced them and you defeated them. You nagged me to tell you the truth and you sat me down to wring compromises and fantasies out of my skull. When you were tired of pulling me up a hill after you, I hope that I was there to keep you going.
> 
> I’ve never been strong on faith, but I don’t think I’ve doubted how much I love you, how much you love me or how committed since that night you wore the dog ears and the paw feet and let me paint spots on you. I didn’t think you’d do it, I was being an asshole when I suggested it, and you must have known but we did it anyway. I think I fell in love with you a hundred times more since that night. We couldn’t even fuck because we were laughing so hard. 
> 
> I love you. I will always love you. I don’t think anything will ever change it now.  
>  Happy Anniversary, Malik.

Malik woke up face-first into his bed, thinking unhappy thoughts about how they had all agreed to only have one drink the night before and had ended up having several. Desmond – infinitely charming bartender that he was – had been insistent they just try one-more-drink. It seemed safe enough the night before but it was a head-crushing mistake in the face of the insistent morning light.

He rolled onto his side with the intention of finding Altair still snoozing behind him and ended up slapping his hand against a sheet of a paper tapped to the front of a beat-up old leather book. It was a floppy sort of thing, held shut by a piece of string that looked like it was on its last thread. He wasn’t alert enough to focus on the words (at first) but he dragged himself up to sitting and picked the book up to set it in his lap. 

Altair’s writing was, as usual, small and slanted. It was hard to read hungover so it took him once or twice to understand the words as anything but indistinct little shapes.

Malik thought, he did remember how frantic everything had felt in those first few years. He remembered being painted like a dog, remembered how Altair had been biting his lips the whole time trying not to laugh and how they had recovered, a bit, to smear the body paint across the sheets and each other and leave stains on the floor when they fell off the bed. 

\--

> Malik,  
>  It’s two thirty in the morning. You’re sleeping. 
> 
> Whatever part of you that’s made a home in the back of my head is rolling its eyes at me. I’m hallucinating the exact sound of your voice; the way your words are quick and sharp when you’re angry. That you in my head is saying ‘go and wake me up, go and wake me up, you know I want to be awake for you, go and wake me up’.
> 
> I’m not sure if I’m ever actually giving this to you, but if I do I hope you’ve gotten over it. I let you sleep because I just wanted to think this through. I just wanted to sit and think it through.
> 
> Do you ever wonder how it happens? Do you wonder when we forget to go home? How we get so caught up in our own lives that we just _neglect_ the people and the places that raised us? I can’t stop thinking of all the years I didn’t _think_ of her. Of all the holidays and all the birthdays and all the _days_ that I didn’t go home, the times—infinite times—when I didn’t think of her. And I think, well she wasn’t my Mother. She wasn’t my Grandmother. She was my Nanny sometimes. 
> 
> But it doesn’t make me feel better. I’ve already forgotten them all, Malik. I forgot my Father before his body even got cold. I forgot my Mother the day I was born. I lose pieces of my Grandmother with every deliberate decision to leave behind the lessons she taught me. I’ve tucked them all up into suitcases in my head and I don’t think about them unless I have to. But they were dead.
> 
> Mrs. Finch wasn’t dead when I needed her. I was just too stupid to remember how to go home. 
> 
> I think, it’s so stupid. It’s _so stupid_ to be lonely for her now. It’s stupid to think about the things I didn’t do for her, about the times I didn’t go and find her, to think about how I’ll never be able to make that better. It’s so _stupid_ to make my list of regrets _now_. 
> 
> The doctor said, ‘she died peacefully’. I know how she died, I was holding her hand when she just _stopped_. I don’t know if that’s peace. I don’t know if that was the best end. I don’t know what she must have thought when she fell asleep, if she was scared of dying or if she knew it was coming. 
> 
> Then I think, she told me, ‘don’t give up your life for little things,’ and she told me, ‘take my books, you’ll appreciate them more than most’ and it makes me so angry. It makes me furious. I’m the record keeper of the dead, the child of a cemetery full of corpses.
> 
> But I miss her. I feel like I’ve been gutted. I feel like there’s nothing left now. 
> 
> Its four now. I’m going to wake you up.  
>  2/17/2010

Malik took a shower to wash the stink of the night before off. To work off the knowledge that (eight years ago now, and how many times since) he’d been sleeping while Altair persisted in his stubborn need to ‘think things through’. He tried to imagine how often it must have happened—after Mrs. Finch, and Giovanni, the day after Ezio had come and said, “I love my parents, but there’s no justice for what they’ve done,” and maybe when Desmond had said he was having a child.

Maybe when Federico had broken down crying the way Malik had never even considered possible, after his Father had died, when his last child was born. 

Malik had made peace with the things he couldn’t help. He’d set those things on the shelf of small regrets and allowances. He’d given Altair permission to do what he had to and he’d been there when his presence was welcomed again. But it _hurt_ (still, years later) to see it from the inside out.

\--

> Husband,  
>  I had a plan to give you this book two days ago, when we were married. I even had it in my bag because I thought it would be a great gift. Here, Malik, have the past seven-eight years of my sporadic writing about my feelings about you. Hey Malik remember that time I was so angry at you for lying to me that I acted like an asshole and treated you like shit? Lucky for you! It’s all here in the book.
> 
> I thought you would understand it the way I meant for it to be understood. These are all the things I wasn’t any good at telling you right away. These are the things that made me angriest and most in love with you. And the things that made me happy too, I guess. 
> 
> But I forgot, so I guess we’ll just have to wait for another important anniversary. Maybe our tenth. Or just whenever it finally runs out of paper. It might already be out if I were better at talking to it regularly. 
> 
> Isn’t it funny how our anniversary works? Its either seven years since we met and started dating, ten years since we had sex at prom or two days since we got married. Let’s see which one of us forgets our anniversary first. I’m betting on you.  
>  5/23/16

There was nobody in the kitchen when Malik went down to make breakfast. He had some intention to put effort into eating, but he settled on toast and jelly. There was a smear of blackberry on the corner of the page of the book that he couldn’t rub off with a paper towel (and quit trying after the paper rolled in fat little wheals).

To the surprise of nobody, exactly, Malik had been the first one to forget their anniversary. Not the day they married (because he’d committed himself to always remembering that day) but the day they met at Altair’s apartment had fallen out of his immediate memory. Every year, he woke up to find some little token – a picture, a small gift or a fresh helping of his favorite food – and every year he’d smacked himself in the face all over again for having forgotten. If Altair took offense to the habitual failure to commemorate the day, he didn’t show it.

Malik tuck his tongue out at the book (since he was alone) and muttered, “but you don’t remember my birthday.”

\--

> Malik,  
>  I met this girl yesterday. She was a grad student at the college. And she had these really interesting pale brown eyes, the kind that are very clear and deep looking. We sat at this bar talking about some bullshit sport on TV. She knew everything, all the teams and stats and I just listened and offered color commentary. 
> 
> We were flirting, this is what I mean to say. I can’t even blame it on her because it was hardly one sided. But it was _exciting_ and _easy_ the way I remember life being before you. When nothing mattered to me but getting exactly what I wanted. I thought that I could have fucked that girl, at her place, and how long it had been since I’d been able to do anything like it.
> 
> We’ve only been here for four months and I don’t even know how you feel about the weather most days but I think I know you well enough to keep from risking our sense of security over this. It’s not that I wanted her. It was just so easy to get caught in the romantic view of the past. We were the same once, (if on different scales), thoughtless about monogamy and relationships. I just want to know if you’ve ever _wanted_ any of that back. If you’ve ever found yourself arguing with some guy, thinking about how much you’d like to pull his clothes off. 
> 
> I want to know so I don’t feel alone about it.  
>  12/9/2009

There was nobody in house when he walked through it. Altair’s meeting wasn’t for another week, when he checked his phone there was no emergency text from Maria calling for help. Or Desmond. Malik sent a text asking where Altair had gone and settled himself into a corner of he couch to keep flipping through the book. It was too thick and too long to read all of in one day so he turned the pages to places where the pen was darkest, the words and pictures were cut deep into the paper.

It didn’t surprise him to know that Altair had flirted with women; they had been discordant that first year, bumping against one another and their intentions as they worked out how to live together. Altair was bored of being tied to one place. He was itching for the fight that was brewing between the Auditores. 

It exploded in the end, over a holiday weekend when they screamed their anger and disappointment at one another. They’d aired the list of things they wanted and didn’t have and the compromises they’d made without asking. 

Malik remembered the dark bruises Altair’s tight hands left on him when they fucked and the rings of teeth mark’s he’d dug into Altair’s skin as an answer. But they worked it out, after, sitting together in the ruined bed, using words that scared them.

Maybe, Malik smiled about it now because Altair had been so ashamed of himself when he’d finally told him. Maybe, he smiled now because he knew the man he was nine-ten years ago wouldn’t have. It seemed _trivial_ , that shame over flirting with strangers, the worry that they couldn’t understand being attracted to others. 

Malik thought, _they were such children_ ten years ago and the thought made him laugh. They were children, sure, and now they were mature adults drawing spots on one another and playing doctor in the bedroom. Mature adults like Altair in the kitchen, fellating carrots while their guests weren’t looking just so Malik would laugh at him. 

\--

> self important douche,  
>  As hard as it is for you to realize that there are things OUTSIDE YOUR REALM OF EXPERIENCE, it is actually ENTIRELY POSSIBLE for children to grow up SAFE, LOVED AND WELL-CARED FOR, even if their parents happen to be entirely self-involved whiny ass-fuckers like you. For that MATTER, it’s actually POSSIBLE for you to get OVER IT. 
> 
> I don’t need to provide you with SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE or CASE STUDIES to prove to you that WE COULD RAISE CHILDREN because I’m actually NOT THAT BAD OF A PERSON despite your estimation of my person. In fact, not only are you insulting to me when you argue your petty, ridiculous, point of view (THAT IS ACTUALLY BASED ENTIRELY ON YOUR OWN FEAR) but it’s insulting to every person who helped to raise us.
> 
> How about you go and tell your SAINT MOTHER how she FUCKED UP SO BADLY you couldn’t possibly RAISE A CHILD WITH ANY STABILITY. Because when you say incredibly stupid shit like that, you’re not saying ‘oh I’m scared of having kids because I’m a big ass whining diaper baby’ you’re saying BY THE WAY MY MOTHER SUCKED AS A PARENT, THE WAY YOUR MANY PARENTS WERE FAILURES. And you know what
> 
> My Grandmother wasn’t that bad. While my emotional literacy (AS YOU FREQUENTLY TELL ME) is a little behind that of the average adult (ACCORDING TO YOU ONLY) I actually do know the difference between right and wrong and I don’t suffer from a crippling level of self-doubt or depression or any other severe, debilitating mental problem. IN FACT, ONE MIGHT SAY that I’m not even that bad off. 
> 
> WHAT I’M SAYING IS, if fucking Edward-the-drunk-cousin-fucker-Kenway managed to raise TWO CHILDREN and they aren’t raving lunatics shooting sharks off the side of the ship while they sip Bacardi, and if FEDERICO-THE-RAGING-RAGE-MONSTER-AND-PART-TIME-FUCK-UP isn’t sending his children to immediate counselling for crippling self-doubt, self-hatred, and possible borderline personality disorder THEN I THINK IT’S REASONABLE TO EXPECT that people are COMMITTED can overcome the scars their parents left.
> 
> SO PLEASE TELL ME how you are so fucking DAMAGED by your childhood that you couldn’t possibly have children. TELL ME HOW TERRIBLE it was to have a Mother that loved you. Explain all of that to me you PRETENTIOUS LITTLE PRICK because I DON’T UNDERSTAND the basis of your argument.
> 
> BECAUSE I DO WANT CHILDREN. I _DO_ want a family. And you are the only person on this whole STUPID PLANET that is capable of keeping me from having them. So explain it to me again. Explain to me why we can’t have them.  
>  7/27/2013  
> 

Malik wrestled London into her little jacket and went outside to watch her sniff around the snow to find anywhere worthy of her urine. His coat was inside because he told himself (this time, surely, this _time_ it would only take the stupid dog a minute). The cold was a bitter bite that snuck in under the long sleeve of his shirt and up under his pant legs because he didn’t wear socks. 

The chill was a quiet relief from his lingering guilt. Altair didn’t keep his anger a secret. There has been months of constant fighting over the notion of having children. 

Looking back, it was so frivolous, such a waste of time. He had only enough time to appreciate that pain for a moment before the dug jumped her way back to the door and pawed at his leg to be allowed back in.

\--

> malik  
>  Today Peyton broke her arm. You’re still hiding in the nursery ‘putting things together’ like we all believe that you’re perfectly fine. I just want to point out that a small child broke her arm today and she, her parents, me, your brother, Claudia, all the cats and dogs and your Mother is actually more worried about you than we are about her.
> 
> Look, I don’t think I’ll ever know the right way to react when you get upset like this. I don’t know how to protect you or help you when you won’t communicate. I don’t actually understand why you’re upset. 
> 
> I can’t tell if it’s just because Peyton got hurt and you don’t deal well with traumatic injuries (and you don’t, I remember how you hid in your office for two days after Kadar almost cut two of his fingers off and had to have surgery and all the stitches). Or if it’s because the kid was screaming about how she didn’t want to get her arm cut off by the doctor. (Maybe because everyone besides you was trying not to laugh because she was so dramatic about it.) 
> 
> But maybe, if you could give me a hint sometimes? So I know what to tell the assembled crowd ‘just stopping by to have dinner’ and then ‘cleaning up’ and then ‘just a few more minutes’. Because if you take very much longer to come out, they’re going to send Peyton in to get you.  
>  6/21/2017

Malik did bother to get dressed to walk across the long backyard to Desmond’s house. He invited himself in through the back door with the book tucked under his arm and went to find Lucy humming to herself in the kitchen. There were breakfast dishes in the sink and Peyton’s toys on the counter.

“Do you know where the idiot went?” Malik asked. He slapped the book down on the counter and pulled a stool over to sit on it. 

Lucy said, “which one?” She poured him a cup of coffee and brought it over to set just beyond the reach of his hand. “Mine went missing after breakfast, he took Peyton with him so I think it’s probably likely he has yours and the baby with him.” She had her own cup of coffee, pressed between her cupped palms. “Is that the book Altair’s been writing in for a decade?”

“Yes,” Malik said. He took a sip of coffee. 

“Is it good?” Lucy asked. She found her own barstool and sat down without trying to peek at the pages. “Is it in English?”

“Some of it,” Malik said. ‘Some of it is written in Arabic script, some of it is in Italian, and then a bit of it is in English.” He sighed. “Do you ever think about when you fell in love with Desmond? Do you ever think, how the fuck did this happen?”

“Sure,” Lucy said. But her face didn’t show any regrets (if there were any to have). “I was a fucking mess. I had quit school and I was thinking about going back into the air force. I was just starting to get really angry about how my life was going to shit. Looking back, it’s a wonder that we made it, you know? I mean, I still can’t look at Desmond for more than minute before I get the urge to tear his clothes off but I think aside from _that_ ,” as if that level of physical attraction was so insignificant, “what attracted me to him was the sense that I wasn’t the only fucked up person? At first it was about trying to make him better and then I think it was just a lot of overcompensating for everything I found out about him. I mean that turned out well, but I don’t think that I would have put so much effort into anyone else.” She smiled. “But, _God_ , I love him.” She lifted her coffee like she was going to take a drink of it and then stopped, “you read anything in there you didn’t already know?”

“No,” Malik said. “Just, a different way of looking at it.”

Lucy nodded. “So, when is Maria due?”

“Another month,” Malik said, “unless she gets her way. I went to see her yesterday and she was trying to talk Altair into suing the doctor so he’d do a c-section and take the babies out. I think she’s sick of being in the hospital.”

“Well she’s been there for a few weeks,” Lucy said. “I didn’t even like staying overnight with Peyton. Speaking of, she wanted to know if she was going to be able to help you finish getting the nursery ready. I wasn’t sure what the deal you made with her was so I told her she’d have to ask.” 

“Oh shit,” Malik said. “I did tell her she could help.” He grimaced that.

Lucy laughed, “you already finished it?”

“Altair did it while I was sleeping. I can go take the sheets off the beds or something. He was proud of himself so I didn’t say anything and then I forgot.” He scoffed and picked up his coffee to finish it. “I’ll go do that.”

“Have fun,” Lucy said. “Should I just send her over when they get back?”

Malik was nodding as he let himself out, only barely remembered to add on a verbal, “yes, that’s perfect.”

\--

> Malik,  
>  Love is so fucking scary, you know? 
> 
> I don’t even know how I fell in love with you. But, I don’t remember a single moment of my life when I didn’t. It’s there, those hazy gray memories of being a kid but everything that has happened to me—to you—to everyone around me after you showed up in my life, full of spite and venom is so _bright_ that it makes everything that happen before seem dull. 
> 
> How terrifying is that? How awful is it to put all your faith into someone? How can a person live sustainably when they’ve tangled themselves up with someone else? Who can even say that in six years we’ll still be able to stand one another? 
> 
> Fuck.
> 
> Just, half the time I _know_ that I can love you forever. I think there are no words to express what I feel when I wake up with you in my bed, what I feel when I find you reading your stupid text books in the living room, what I feel about your soap in my shower or the smell of you in the kitchen cooking the food your Mother taught you how to make. I think, there is no happiness more divine or more powerful than the happiness that I feel with my arms around you. I think, I can forgive every single annoying thing about you because accepting you means falling in love with your loud mouth and your constant biting retorts, it means loving your disapproval at carelessness and your indignation at injustice. You exhaust me and even that feels like a revelation I don’t deserve.
> 
> Then half the time, I see our inevitable death. I see the moments when no compromise can be reached. I think I can find the cracks that will turn to fissures and snap us in two. In a nightmare future, I think it’s as possible that we will end like Mama Maria, shedding photo-op tears over the grave of a man she might never have loved. 
> 
> The worst thing in the world, the most devastating loss I can imagine is that one day I’ll resent you, that one day I’ll be so bitter with my own regrets and doubt that I won’t be able to remember what loving you felt like.
> 
> I love you, I love every dumb thing you do. I love every mean thing you say. I love the whole sum of you as a person with every part of me. And it’s _terrifying_ to know that I’ve wound my future up in yours. So please don’t ever stop loving me. And don’t die before me.  
>  12/3/2011

The nursery had developed an unfortunate leaning toward color coding. Malik had been opposed to the notion when Maria suggested it during a family picnic. She was still fresh off the shock of finding out she was carrying _three_ babies, spiteful enough to lovingly refer to the unborn (boys) as Huey, Dewey and Louie. It had been a hell of a joke when they were all out in the late-summer-afternoon thinking up Halloween costumes for a set of triplets. 

Reality was yellow, blue and green in neat rows everywhere in the nursery. The beds and the clothes and the blankets had been sectioned off. Altair was prone to fits of obsessive organization when he was stressed. Maria’s second pregnancy (a concession she made because Altair had finally consulted enough doctors to be reasonably sure that he and Maria could produce children that would not get any of the many recessive traits that killed his family) was a great long series of stress. The decision to use fertility drugs had been a mistake (according to Maria who had the pleasure of carrying three children at once) but it had seemed pragmatic when she was worried about how long and how many tries it would take her to get pregnant after the first time. (“Apparently,” Maria had said, “when you don’t use it, you lose it. Thank God your dicks get regular workouts.”) 

Malik had pulled all of the blankets off their neat shelves and emptied the drawer of neatly folded onesies. He left the sheets on the beds (if only because they were made up so impractically nice). There were frames like place holders over the beds, ready to be filled with pictures of the boys’ first day. If it turned out anything like Jaida’s it would be a parade of crying family members clutching tiny, red infants. 

The house was too quiet and empty without Jaida and Altair. Sitting in the sweetly perfect nursery (just waiting for the arrival of their sons), with his head half-full of Altair’s long-ago-ramblings, even the sunlight drifting through the breezy curtains seemed lonely. 

Hangovers made him moody. He sighed and picked up the journal to tuck under his arm before he left the room. There was enough for Peyton to help him with to satisfy her and not enough disorder to upset Altair. (It was really inevitable he’d come back and fix it himself later though.) He meant to go to his office, to look through the to-do list that he’d compiled earlier that year and never completed. But he found himself caught in Jaida’s doorway, looking at her brand-new-doll house (just for big girls, the sort that sang and played noises) and the scribble she’d left on the whiteboard wall. 

He thought of Altair sitting next to her, showing her how to form letters and lines while she inexpertly clutched her markers. Her face streaked with colors from how many times she had to push her stringy black hair away from her face. Kadar had been the first to say she looked exactly like their Mother but Altair said it most. He said, “I think we cloned your Mother. She even has her frown.” 

Malik set the journal on the dresser (with all her dishes of hair bows, and her pretty bracelets and her earrings) and went to pick up a marker off the tray to the side of the wall. Altair was, by far, the superior artist but Malik had managed (now and again) to earn the affection and approval of their daughter with his adequate attempts at drawing flowers. He left them for her while she was gone or when she fell asleep. He wrote the words ‘I love you’ next to them (even if she couldn’t read them) in Arabic script. It hadn’t been his choice but Altair’s to raise their children to speak both languages from birth. Altair spoke and wrote in English for her (because as he pointed out, Malik was far better at Arabic and had an entire family that could speak it as well) and Malik spoke and wrote Arabic.

When he was finished, he picked up her stuffed rabbit that had fallen on the floor, tucked it back into her bed and picked up the journal on the way out. 

\--

> FELLOW FATHER,  
>  TODAY WE HAD A DAUGHTER. Oh God Maria is never going to forgive us, I don’t care. She’s perfect, our baby girl, she’s absolutely perfect.  
>  1/17/2018

Malik didn’t make it to the office to check on his list of things to do. He ended up back in the kitchen, trying to find something he could make for lunch that would be ready early enough for him to eat it in a short time and stay good long enough for the others to return. It had to be something that wouldn’t offend Peyton’s delicate taste buds but was familiar enough that Jaida would eat it without having to cry first.

(Basically, there was nothing.)

Altair came home _at last_ carrying Jaida (looking fat and pleased with chocolate smeared on her cheeks) with a bag dangling off his arm and Peyton hopping along next to him. Peyton had chocolate at the corners of her mouth. “Sorry,” Altair said. “I got your message.” He leaned into kiss Malik and Jaida put her hand out to press against Malik’s shoulder so he wouldn’t get any ideas about kissing her too. 

“Mommy said that I could help you with the nursery today,” Peyton said. “Daddy said that while I was here I should just pick out my new bedroom and Mommy said that I shouldn’t _presume_ that I would get my own room.” Peyton took her coat off while she was talking, stood there shaking her arm until the sleeve finally slid off and then tucked it over her arm and looked up at him. “I don’t want to share with Jaida. Babies smell.”

Altair snorted at that notion. Then he set the bag on the island in the center of the kitchen and pulled the high chair out of its hiding place. Jaida was always happy to see the potential for food, her little hands clapped together and she squealed her high-pitched tones of happiness. The girl couldn’t be put into bed, the bath, a car seat or a swing without screaming in objection and twisting around for her freedom but she would consent to being set into a high chair like an angel. She even let Altair take off her coat.

Malik got a washcloth to wipe her face and she howled in objection (of course she did), “oh you’re fine. You won’t melt.” When he finished he let her have the cloth to play with. She sucked at the chocolate marks on it with her sharp teeth clenching around the rolls of it, intent on sucking the flavor out again. “Peyton,” he said since she was still waiting, “I’m not sure there’s enough rooms in the house for you to have your own right now.”

“I have my own room at New York.” She looked very haughty about that information too. “I have my own room at the tall house.” Which was an unfair comeback since everyone in the family had their own room in the mansion. “I have my own room at London.” She hadn’t, but the hotel they stayed at frequently had suites. 

Altair was smirking to himself while he spooned a glob of hummus onto Jaida’s tray and took the washcloth from her. Distracted by the sight of food, she didn’t even object to having her favorite toy stolen. “She could have her own room if you let me make the house bigger,” Altair said. He plucked a cracker from the container on the counter and dipped it in the hummus (smug as ever) while Peyton drew in a breath loud enough even her parents could have heard it.

“Make the house bigger!” she shouted. 

“I hate you,” Malik said. “You can’t use a four year old to win every argument.”

“I don’t.” That was a lie. But he was too pleased with himself to be tolerated. “I win all the R-rated ones myself.” He chewed his cracker while Jaida assessed the offering on her tray with the fine air of a culinary expert. Her eyebrows were pulled in tight and her mouth was opened in a way that seemed to border on disgust. When she finally put the hummus in her mouth she rolled it around her mouth making a face like she would vomit at a seconds notice. 

Altair said, “mmmm,” and Jaida looked up at him (the traitor) and watched (in horror) as he ate his cracker-and-hummus with obvious delight. “It’s good. Daddy made it.”

Jaida looked back down at the hummus again and then at Altair, and then back at the food, and then at Altair and then held her hand up and made the grasping motion with her fist. Malik handed her a cracker and she made a thank-you noise. 

“What do I get for lunch?” Peyton asked. She was unconvinced about hummus (she was unconvinced about most foods). “Mommy’s not here so you don’t have to make me eat carrots.” 

“Chicken nuggets,” Malik said, “but you do have to eat carrots. Do you want them cooked or cold?” He was expecting Peyton to roll her eyes, he expected her to groan, and it wasn’t a surprise when she fell over backward on to the floor either. The kid didn’t throw fits (much, anymore) but she was prone to dramatics that made the Italian side of her family seem tame. 

“Kill me,” Peyton said.

Malik looked down at her, “you have to wait for spring, the grounds frozen so we’ll have nowhere to bury the body.” And she groaned again at that. He ignored her in favor of giving Jaida another cracker and she blew him a kiss. 

Altair was looking as casual as he possibly could when it was obvious he was _dying_ for a reaction to his gift. Malik was torn between letting him sweat it out and trying to communicate the great many strange things he felt about the whole thing. It was easier to be distracted by the long wheezing sound of defeat coming from the floor as Peyton said, 

“ _Fine, cooked_ ,” and almost immediately after added, “can you put cinnamon and sugar in them?”

Peyton, lovely only child that she was, had grown up with the understanding that she was the center of a vast universe. While she’d weathered being replaced as the baby with as much grace as any three year old possibly could ask for, the mutual decision of the adults of the two houses has been to reassure her in these dark and troubling times that lay before them by giving her an adequate amount of attention before all hell broke loose. In short, Malik spent at least four hours out of his day listening intently to Peyton, being shown her progress on learning to read on her tablet, playing games with her and helping her care for the baby dolls she’d been given when Desmond and Lucy had broken the tragic news that Altair and Malik were going to have three more babies.

(None of that, most likely, would actually help her when the babies were finally born. But it was a nice thought.)

So, lunch passed with Peyton holding court over the table, explaining how she needed her own room in the house since Lucy had agreed to come help them manage the triplets. (His Mother was also coming and being paid, very nearly against her will, a reasonable wage for her time away from work. Peyton liked his Mother well enough to call her Grandma but didn’t consider her a member of the central family.) In Peyton’s estimation, sharing a bed with her Mother in the guest room was not the same as having her own room. 

Altair kept quiet but smirked to himself the whole time she was talking. The bastard would win in the end. The house would need to get larger if they were going to keep it as a primary residence. Three babies fit into a bedroom well enough but once they grew too big for cribs, there wasn’t enough space in the house for all of them. 

After lunch, Malik took Peyton to help with the boys’ room and she was happily rolling onesies into balls until her Mother came to pick her up for swim class. After she was gone, Malik went to find Jaida and Altair laying on the couch. He was squinting at his phone while she slept on his chest, little fat cheek pressed against his heart with her hands on either side of her head. Altair looked over at him, “you’re killing me,” he said. “I’m dying.”

“How’s Maria?” 

“Really pissed,” Altair said, “the same as she was yesterday. I think she’s going to win though. The babies are healthy. She’ll probably bully them into the C-section in a few days.” He set his phone down against his hip and just stared at Malik. 

It was impossible not to smile at him. “Do you think Desmond and Lucy would watch Jaida for the night?”

Altair grinned back at him. “Probably. What were you thinking?”

Malik shrugged. “I was thinking it’s my turn to pick something off the list.” Altair looked very pleased with himself, “I was thinking about that Little Bo Peep costume.” The one with the skirt that didn’t even cover Altair’s ass and the lace up corset top that made Malik’s whole face burn every time he tried to read nursery rhymes to his daughter. 

Maybe he was blushing then because Altair was trying not to laugh with his tongue across his lips and his whole face turning pink. Jaida shuddered an objecting breath to the rise and fall of his chest while he tried not to laugh. “Ok,” he choked out, “but if we’re reusing old favorites, I want to revisit—”

“We are never playing Greek statues again,” Malik said before he could say it. “You traded that option away when you bargained for sex every day.” 

Altair gave up on trying not to laugh and tipped is head back to laugh hard enough it shook Jaida awake with a trembling cry. It was the only time she ever preferred Malik, when Altair scared her with his laughing. She cried until Malik picked her up and held her against him. Then she sniffled and snuffled and snuggled back into a comfortable lean. “Fine,” he said, “but I get an old favorite too. I’ll have to think of something.”

“Fine,” Malik said. He moved to the nice recliner and Jaida objected to being moved but settled again when she realized they were going to the good chair. “You should probably go fix the nursery how you had it.”

Altair sat up and smiled at them. (The way he always did, all fond and strange.) “But,” he said like he was trying to figure out what he wanted to ask. “We’re good?”

“Of course we’re good,” Malik said. He looked up when Altair stopped by the chair to throw a blanket over them. He couldn’t touch him because Jaida was caught in that mid-sleep that made it a bad idea to move her. Altair smiled again, the echo of his every word caught in his face (all at once) and Malik thought (me too) so loudly it must have shown on his face. Altair bent to kiss him, soft, sweet and lewd.


End file.
